Monthly Archives: May 2019
AHEAD of the House of Commons debate yesterday, the GMB Trade Union says an estimated 54,000 women lose their jobs every year due to pregnancy or maternity. The GMB is demanding that mothers cannot be sacked from the moment they become pregnant until 12 months after they return to work. The...
VULNERABLE children are being let down says Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, criticising the use of restraint and seclusion. On Monday she published a new report, ‘Far less than they deserve: Children with learning disabilities or autism living in mental health hospitals’. The report reveals that many children are...
IT is a fact that at times of acute economic crisis in the world capitalist system the minds of bourgeois economists and commentators are drawn, much against their will, back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. They have spent over a century dismissing it as a mere ‘unfortunate accident’ that...
IRAN’S Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned US President Donald Trump to avoid threatening the Iranians, advising him to ‘try respect’ as the only approach to the Iranian nation, which may bear fruit. ‘NeverThreatenAnIranian. Try respect – it works!’ Zarif said in a post on his official Twitter account...
THREE unions – BALPA, Unite, and GMB – representing 25,000 British Airways workers have rejected the company’s latest pay deal meaning that a major strike is now looming. Unite said in a letter to its members: ‘Unite met last week to review BA’s revised offer and unanimously resolved to reject...
NURSES at their annual RCN (Royal College of Nursing) conference in Liverpool yesterday demanded that NHSEngland finally adopts a Safe Staffing Level, requiring by law a minimum ratio of staff to patients. At the moment, the RCN warns, staffing levels are at such a crisis point that patients’ lives...
A DEVASTATING ‘blunder’ that saw 160,000 patient records wrongly archived is the latest unacceptable failing from Capita, doctors union BMA (British Medical Association) said yesterday. NHSEngland has written to GP practices to inform them that 160,000 patient records were ‘mistakenly archived rather than transferred to surgeries, in the latest error...
AMNESTY International is supporting a legal action to take the Israeli Ministry of Defence (MoD) to court to demand that it revokes the export license of NSO Group, an Israeli company whose spyware products have been used in chilling attacks on human rights defenders around the world. NSO Group sells...
SOME are being misled to believe that the soon-to-be-announced ‘deal of the century’ is a US-sponsored peace initiative aimed at resolving the so-called Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, such a perception is erroneous, not only because the US is not interested in achieving a just peace in the region, but because the...
THE TRUMP administration has ratcheted up the confrontation with China with an escalation of its economic trade war, coupled with a provocative military build-up the South China Sea. In the front line of the US government’s economic attack is the Chinese communications giant Huawei, which last week Trump blacklisted from...
JEREMY Corbyn hemmed and hawed yesterday over whether Labour may back Tory PM May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill which she intends to put before parliament in early June, if she survives that long. Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Times newspaper, May said she intends to make a ‘bold offer’ to Labour. The...
THE chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said Iran does not seek war but is not afraid of one either. Making a speech yesterday, Major General Hossein Salami said that Iran was currently facing a threat close to its territory and thus the IRGC had operationalised its...
FOUR BILLION pounds of UK property is owned by high-risk individuals. The House of Lords Joint Committee is looking at the market and money laundering. The draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill is urgently needed, but its loopholes must be addressed. The Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill...
PALESTINE’S Minister of Foreign and Expatriates Affairs, Riyad al-Maliki, described on Friday the US deal of the century as a ‘consecration’ of the century-long Palestinian suffering of no independence, no sovereignty and no freedom. The following is the full text of al-Maliki’s speech: ‘Allow me at the outset to thank...
A JUST-LEAKED report by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) engineers contradicts the chemical watchdog’s official report on the April 2018 ‘chemical’ attack on Douma in Syria that was blamed on President Assad. The claim by terrorist organisations that the Syrian armed forces were the attacker was...
JUNIOR doctors be warned. A historic new GP contract has been quietly negotiated by the BMA and NHSEngland, designed to catapult NHS healthcare into American models of healthcare for profit. ‘Investment and Evolution: a five-year framework for GP contract reform to implement the NHS Long Term Plan’ was published by...
‘STAFF and students will stand together and we will not stand down until he is gone,’ Jo McNeill from the lecturers union UCU said yesterday. The candidate for the union’s position of General Secretary was speaking on the steps of SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) yesterday, where a...
ROCIO Maneiro, Venezuela’s Ambassador to Britain, yesterday launched a new booklet ‘Trump unblock Venezuela’, which details the economic blockade by the US against Venezuela starting from December 2014 right up to the present day. The Ambassador was at pains to insist that ‘this blockade did not start with Trump, this...
SYRIA has censured Israel’s land theft and repressive measures against Syrians in the occupied side of the Golan Heights as a flagrant violation of international law, saying that Damascus reserves the right to re-establish control over the occupied land. In letters to the UN chief and the president of the...
ONLINE retail giant Amazon is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, it was announced yesterday, into the gig economy delivery service Deliveroo in the US. Amazon has come under fire over its horrific treatment of warehouse workers who are increasingly being replaced by packing machines. New machines can pack...
PRESIDENT Donald Trump has declared a National Emergency to protect US computer networks from ‘foreign adversaries’. He signed an executive order which effectively bars US companies from using foreign telecoms believed to pose national security risks. The order does not name any company, but is believed to target Huawei. The Chinese tech...
RMT’s Mick Cash has repeated his call for ‘Failing Grayling’ to go as the scale of the probation service scandal emerges. Cash said: ‘The truly appalling scale of the shambles on Chris Grayling’s watch at the probation service during his time as Justice Secretary shows that this man is not...
AT LEAST thirteen Palestinian protesters were shot and injured with Israeli live ammunition, on Wednesday, during mass protests commemorating the 71st anniversary of Nakba Day or ‘catastrophe’ near the return camps along the eastern borders of the besieged Gaza Strip. Local sources confirmed that thousands of Palestinian protesters in Gaza,...
PALESTINIANS commemorated the 71st anniversary of the Nakba Day (May 15th – the Day of Catastrophe) in the occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip with mass protests against Israel and the US, the regime’s staunch supporter. Palestinians marked the occasion — when the Israeli regime proclaimed its existence...
SECRET recordings have revealed that the American pilots union confronted US aircraft manufacturer Boeing about the safety of their bestselling 737 Max 8 plane months before the same aircraft crashed in Ethiopia killing all 157 passengers and crew. The recordings were made of a closed door meeting in November between...
PASSING lorries, cars and buses hooted in support along the busy London Road in Isleworth, west London, as University and College Union (UCU) members picketed outside West Thames College (WTC) on their 8th day of strike action yesterday morning. Sharon Orr, WTC UCU Chair, told News Line: ‘We’re standing strong....
THE FIRE Brigades Union (FBU) annual conference opened in Blackpool yesterday. On the eve of the conference union leader Matt Wrack said, ‘No one in the labour movement believed Theresa May’s declaration last year that austerity was “over”.’ He added: ‘In June 2017, London experienced its worst loss of life since...
BERNIE SANDERS, the US Senator, issued a live video on Tuesday warning that a war by the US against Iran would be ‘many times worse than the Iraq War.’ Sanders, the front runner to win the Democratic Party nomination to stand against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential elections, was...
Longshore workers in British Columbia have overwhelmingly voted to authorise industrial action, raising the prospect of a strike at the Port of Vancouver, Canada’s busiest port, which handles the largest volume of cargo in and out of the country. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada has announced that...
Longshore workers in British Columbia have overwhelmingly voted to authorise industrial action, raising the prospect of a strike at the Port of Vancouver, Canada’s busiest port, which handles the largest volume of cargo in and out of the country. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada has announced that...
SAUDI Arabia have been forced to halt pumping oil through one of their major pipelines after a successful Yemeni drone strike yesterday afternoon. Saudi Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, Khalid Al-Falih confirmed, the kingdom has stopped pumping crude oil on the major pipeline after retaliatory drone strikes carried out by...
One Day in Gaza Shown on BBC 2 Monday 13 May 2019 Now available on BBC iPlayer MADE by award-winning documentary maker Olly Lambert, One Day in Gaza pays tribute to the heroism and determination of Palestinians to be free, and confirms the cold-blooded ruthlessness of a nervous Zionist state. The documentary examines...
THE Unite trade union has described Honda’s decision to press ahead with the closure of its Swindon plant by 2021 as a ‘body-blow of betrayal,’ after the Japanese company rejected an alternative plan which would have kept it open and working. The livelihoods of over 15,000 direct Honda employees, the...
CHILDREN across the UK began sitting their Sats tests yesterday, with parents at many schools boycotting the exams and taking their children out of school. Meanwhile, a new study from King’s College London (KCL) has concluded Sats are no better than teachers at predicting pupils’ GCSE and A-Level results. The...
A SPOKESMAN from Iran’s Foreign Ministry yesterday warned of a ‘conspiracy by ill-wishers’ to blame Iran for an imperialist provocation, the ‘sabotage’ of four ships at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) port of Fujairah on Sunday. Neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia has explained exactly what form this sabotage took....
THE LEADER of the UK opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, reiterated on Saturday his party’s support for the Palestinian cause, condemning human rights violations by Israel. In a Facebook post on his page, Corbyn wrote: ‘We cannot stand by or stay silent at the continuing denial of rights and justice...
More than 40 US states have filed a lawsuit accusing pharmaceutical firms of operating a cartel and conspiring to artificially inflate the cost of common medicinal drugs. The lawsuit alleges that as many as 20 companies have been involved in fixing prices for over 100 drugs, including treatments for diabetes...
‘WITH THE Eurovision Song Contest taking place on Saturday, the year-long campaign to boycott the competition in Israel is ramping up,’ Zoe Lawlor from the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) said yesterday. The Eurovision Song Contest 2019 is scheduled to take place in Tel Aviv following Israel’s win at the...
YESTERDAY Sweden’s deputy director of public prosecutions, Eva-Marie Persson, announced that an investigation into a rape allegation made against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange in 2010 will now be reopened. This is while the US wants to extradite Assange from the UK over his alleged role in the release of classified...